


Hydrophobia

by TheGnimaerd



Category: Death Note, Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Mystery, Other, POV First Person, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-14
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 12:24:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGnimaerd/pseuds/TheGnimaerd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, Nate River wakes up with illusionary blood on his hands and imagines a dying-sunset future that could have been without a boy with blue eyes like the ocean and a reach just as vast.</p><p>This is the Story of Near, and how he watched The Boy take over the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
_Introduction:_   


When I saw him for the first time, I knew that things would begin to go wrong. I do not believe in ridiculous things, things that could be classified as supernatural and things belonging in works of fiction. I believe in facts, and what I ought to believe in within this realm, this world.

I believe in the color white. I like the stoic feeling it gives, the feeling that you do not need color in order for one to express knowledge, creativity—And the ability to build.

And I believe in that when I first saw the boy whose name was originally Ciel Phantomhive at nine years and three months old exactly, I had known that things were about to go very, very wrong. It was hard to define him in an exact way of logic and certainty, and that made him dangerous. Dangerous in an inexplicable way, dangerous in the way that water is dangerous when you are drowning and you do not know how to swim... And the shadows creep for your feet to drag you under.

The Boy, as I shall henceforth call him because names are silly things that you should not classify with such a creature of nature: He is great, in a way that the darkness that falls when night comes is great. He is not strong purely in an intellectual way, but he has a force of mind that is eerily similar to the water that drowns you, in a way that he will wear down everything within his path.

He will not wait. He will not tire. And he will not fail.


	2. Chapter One: Memory

 

 

_MEMORY |ˈmem(ə)rē|noun ( pl. -ries)1 a person's power to remember things_

  
_• the power of the mind to remember things_   
_• the mind regarded as a store of things remembered_

_• the capacity of a substance to return to a previous state or conditionafter having been altered or deformed._

  
_2 something remembered from the past; a recollection_   
_• the length of time over which people continue to remember a person or event_   
_• the remembering or recollection of a dead person, esp. one who was popular or respected_

  
__3 the part of a computer in which data or program instructions can be stored for retrieval.• capacity for storing information in this way_ _

* * *

I stare today up at the terrible blankness of the white lights that shine into my room, And I know is that nothing here is real. White, the nothing-color has become everything, everything to me but the cold metal steel that makes the frame of my bed. The curtains are white;  _I_ am white.

Madness is a terrible thing.

_("Hey Jude, begin…" The cold of the airport bites through the soft cotton of my clothes, and blue eyes haze over in confusion briefly before becoming cold and clear as they are meant to be)_

I shift on the linens, vaguely registering the cold bite of pain of the bedframe against my back. I can feel my spine, knobby as it is as I do so. Closing my eyes and breathing in stale air, I know I am living, but only just.

_(Will you kill me, now?)_

Then I open my eyes, and stare into the vastness of the room before me; An illusion that my own mind has made. I know that it's a square 25 foot cell, I've counted the feet and made the hands. And though I know it's an illusion, it seems so  _wide,_ because the not-color of white stays with me always whether it be day or night, mocking me with long hands that do not exist, along with the phantom scent of sunshine that has not ever reached this godforsaken shell of existence. It  _mocks_  me.  _(Insanity will surround me, little by little. Just as this absence of color has done.)_

Restlessly, I roll with the cold metal that bites into the boning edges of my back.

And not even  _people_ with their dull lives come to break the monotony,  _no one comes_  beyond the sheet of white glass on the opposite end of the room, beyond that stretch of white wall behind it. If they do, they give me plates of  _food_  as they stare at me with blank features and eyes, as if one would stare at an animal.

My hands fist, and the mind makes the old argument to no one in particular: It is not food I need, but  _color_ and  _escape_  from this slow torture. Even L, with his faded colors or Mellowith his brashnesswould have been welcome, but one is gone and the other more so. True, they treated me like an animal just as  _they_  do, but it hardly matters in comparison to the silence that I am currently receiving.

I slump, listless now.

If I was a dangerous animal, then I ought to be shot.

But no such thing will come to be, because  _he_ decreed it.  _He_ with the cold blue eyes that see everything, the omniscient hands and the reverence of shadows that follow him wherever he goes. ( _He_ watches _us now, with eyes that see all from the white corner…) ("Yes, my lord.") (Laughter, a breeze on a hilltop. "I'm Human—" And I know it's a lie, despite the logic that calls for otherwise)_

I shudder, then shake violently, at the implications… huddling into myself…Away from the bright lights, those bright whitelights that reveal everything, anything. _Everything_ I am.

Oh, but anything is better than water. Water will take….And destroy…And it will sweep anything in it's path…

Still shaking, I blindly face the lights.

At times…When  _they_ leave me alone, I wonder if they know that it drives me to further insanity to be left like this, when there's nothing here any longer but me and I and my thoughts and  _memories._  It is in vain I burrow myself deeper into myself _,_  swathing myself in terrible blankness and white nothing in order to forget…The eyes colored like dark ocean water and the shadows that always trailed behind them.

_("Surely, you must of known?" That man asked me with that so falsely worried stare, his red eyes dancing like the flame of a fire.)_

Of course I knew, I  _knew_ and  _knew_ back then but there wasn't anything to do against the water, which will sweep everything away in its path. Nor the shadows, taking everything away from you.  _How_ could have I not  _known_? The idea is laughable. I shake with fear, with loneliness and _laughter._

_(I remember everything from that day. That day, when the Boy came and began wiping everything away.)_

Just as I did know, all of those years ago. (Pitter.) I wonder if I'm being slowly driven mad  _again_. (Patter _.) I think it's raining outside again._  I can't tell. I'm in an eggshell. (Patter.) I wonder if it should matter. (Pitterpatterpitter-)

* * *

 

It's raining outside, for perhaps the umpteenth time this month. It's a testament to the English art of resilience that we weren't driven out of these wetlands long ago, I think. Then again, there is an art to rain as well... Falling as it does outside, it's no wonder why our orphanage grounds are so lush. Not that I care, or go outside often.

Leave me to puzzles and rubix cubes, for they are all the life and color I need--Endless building, little stories made out of card houses and other things. The cold plastic of my robots are unforgiving and so commercial, and that's quite comforting. It's a testament to progress of the human race.

_(Warm blankets and the smell of sunshine, as I dream of building upon an endless sea of white)_

Click, goes the puzzle I am currently working on. My hand is automatically attracted to a wild curling of hair, and I finger it with a light smile because I can.

And then the door opens from outside, and the sound is unusual enough that it startles my attention to it. I watch, curiousity aroused as a small boy walks through, drenched from the rain.

There is a tall man that follows him in, clad head-to-toe in black.

But there is no one else. Not Whammy, not Roger. No government official. No one. No one actually bringing them to this place, which strikes me deeply. It's not like Whammy's House is easily accessible, after all... L saw to that, as did Whammy. My fingers smooth over the puzzle pieces, a nervous motion. These strangers, who are they? I look at them, quietly deducing what I can from them.

The boy is wet, clearly he has no umbrella, nor does his companion. He is clad in clothes that don't fit him; he's been clothed in them for a long amount of time judging by their state—A few days, maybe. They belong to his companion; too long to belong to anyone else. And he has no one else to supply clothes to him.

He is an orphan.

He was  _just_ orphaned. _(There are bandages on his fingers, peeking out of the sleeve of the coat. His hair is still holding very faint blackened edges, as if clinging to soot and memories of fire.)_

He tilts his head, with a half-cruel smirk on his lips while looking at his companion—And quite suddenly the thought comes to me that though he is very young, he seems very, very _old_ in truth. As I puzzle this, another thought comes: No orphan child is ever  _proud_ , bowed by the emotions of grief and regret as they often are…

That is not a child.

Disturbed by the irrational turn of my thoughts, I turn my gaze to his companion instead. But he is disturbingly, _inhumanly_ beautiful, with a kind of darkness—Surely, it must be an optical impression from the coat. I shake it off and concentrate. The man is following the boy walking by with a sort of careful reverence, which strikes me as odd. But the more I look, the glaringly obvious fact becomes blinding-- The unwavering, complete deference he has towards  _this_  boy. And it had to  _build._

... Where? No child will ever command respect like that. Not like  _that._

Then the man in black looks at me, quite suddenly. His handsome face is unreadable, not even a spark of interest to show that he has _really_ seen me; I might as well be furniture. 

But an unwilling shiver runs down my spine as we hold gazes, for I am quite sure that his eyes are red.  _Red,_  like how stones, jewels are red.

But then he looked away, and I could breath again.

This was my first glimpse of The Boy.


End file.
